If you have a copy of the Yijing nearby, open it at any hexagram. You will almost certainly see more material on the page than was present in the earliest form of the book: a hexagram figure, perhaps an English name, some translated text, commentary and explanatory notes. It is worth sorting these ingredients out because they belong to different moments in the book’s history.
The oldest core that we generally call the Zhouyi 周易 consists of sixty-four hexagrams and the short texts connected with them. This is the part to start with. The later commentary is often fascinating, but it is a different voice, asking different questions of the older material.
Six lines, sixty-four possibilities
A whole line is commonly called yang and a broken line yin. Stack six lines, choosing either form at each position, and you obtain one of sixty-four combinations. Six places with two possibilities at each place gives 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 = 64. That is the mathematical part. The interesting part begins when each figure is treated as an image to explore rather than as a mere arrangement of strokes.
You read the lines of a hexagram from bottom to top. The lowest line is the first, not the sixth. This is easy to remember if you picture building a house: start with the foundations and work upwards. When the third line is in place, the bottom half of the figure is complete. Three more lines complete the upper half.
Each three-line half is a trigram. There are eight different trigrams, and combining any lower trigram with any upper trigram gives one of the sixty-four hexagrams. In later Yi traditions they carry names and associations: Heaven, Earth, Thunder, Wind, Water, Fire, Mountain and Lake. These names are helpful because they let us think in images rather than in abstract patterns. Thunder beneath Water makes a very different picture from Fire above Wind, even before we look at a single written word.
Consider hexagram 50, 鼎 Ding, often translated as “The Cauldron”. Its figure places Fire above Wind (or Wood, in the associations of the trigram 巽). Already you can imagine heat rising above fuel. The Chinese bronze ding was a cooking and ritual vessel, supported on legs and fitted with handles or ears. The written statements of the hexagram mention its legs and ears. Here the figure’s later trigram associations and the wording of the received text can be read alongside one another. They do different work; each makes the other more interesting.
The statements
A chapter of the received Zhouyi begins with its name and a hexagram statement. Western translations often call this “The Judgment”. Then come the six line statements. They are not six paragraphs of continuous prose. One may give an image, another a warning, a third a favourable outcome, and another a scene whose connection becomes clearer only when we spend time with it.
Hexagram 1, 乾 Qian, offers a striking example. The first line says 潛龍勿用, a submerged dragon, followed by 勿用, “do not act” or “do not put it to use.” At the top of the hexagram the dragon is in a very different position. Six lines can give you six moments in a developing scene, though other hexagrams use very different imagery from one line to the next.
In translations, you will often encounter words such as 吉 (ji, auspicious), 凶 (xiong, ominous), 悔 (hui, regret or trouble) and 无咎 (wu jiu, no blame or no misfortune). They belong to the vocabulary of divination. Knowing this helps us hear the text as an oracle: it describes a situation and frequently indicates what its outcome or consequences may be. Such words do not necessarily settle the meaning of the preceding image. They are a further part of the answer to consider.
A few hexagrams, notably Qian and Kun, contain additional material in received editions, and the text as we have it has undergone centuries of transmission. Once we reach the excavated manuscripts we shall see some of those differences directly.
What about the Ten Wings?
Open many Western translations and you will find a passage headed “The Image” after the hexagram statement. Often it speaks of what the junzi 君子, a cultivated or exemplary person, should do. That passage belongs to the Xiang zhuan 象傳, one of the traditional “Ten Wings” of commentary. It is not part of the same early textual layer as the original short statements. The Tuan zhuan 彖傳 comments on the hexagram statement; other Wings examine the trigrams, the arrangement of the hexagrams and the principles of change.
This distinction is helpful rather than troublesome. It means you can enjoy an early image and then see what generations of Chinese thinkers made of it. A dragon first appears as an image in a divination text; later writers give it ethical and cosmological significance. Both are parts of the Yijing’s history. We gain more by hearing the two voices than by blending them into one.
At this point we know the basic ingredients: sixty-four six-line figures, a name, a brief statement and texts for the individual lines. The next question is how those ingredients have been arranged. The answer involves patterns that you can discover simply by turning the pages.
Sources and further reading
- Harmen Mesker, “The Power of the Hexagrams” workshop outline.
- Harmen Mesker, “About Tuan 彖 and Hexagram 1”.
- Edward L. Shaughnessy, The Origin and Early Development of the Zhou Changes (Brill, 2022), chapter 1.